When Pope Benedict issued his Motu Proprio last July, some were excited and saw it as the possible beginning of a new New Springtime, and others sniffed and sneered as is their wont about nostalgia and fringe groups, clucking all the while that this really wasn’t that important because such a small minority would go for this business (which begs the question, if it’s such a tiny blip on the radar, why even bother taking one minute of your life to sniff and sneer?).
Six months later, I think some are surprised. Even more conservative/Traditionalist naysayers are a bit flummoxed at what they have seen. It’s not that the Extraordinary Form is flooding the market, but there is definitely growth, not only in numbers – slow but steady – but in apparent openness. Yes, some doors in many dioceses and parishes remain firmly shut, but there is definitely a subtle shift. Even three years ago, I don’t think many with strong interests in matters liturgical could have predicted that the pervasive stigma attached to the 1962 Missal would be dissolving, slowly but surely, that issues like chant and ad orientem would be matters of serious discussion and interest, sans obligatory “Pre-Vatican II Dark Ages” swipes.
But barriers remain – barriers to understanding, most importantly – and I think these barriers should be confronted forthrightly and honestly from both “sides,” and in utmost charity. The ideological “divisions” within the Catholic Church are a terrible scandal, they impede our response to Jesus’ missional call and they drain energy. But they’re real. And no, the Church has never been, in reality, on the ground, an entity marked by mass mutual conformity or homogeneity – nor should it be – the divisions within the American and European Church, at least, on matters of liturgy and ecclesiology are profound.
I’d like to invite some comment on a particular, very specific question to show how this works and to see if it can be overcome at some level. Bear with me.
When you read liturgical blogs – which I do, daily – one of the things that you often find are photographs of Masses which evoke, in readers, responses marked by appreciation for the beauty of what is going on in the photograph. The same photograph, viewed by others, would provoke another, different responses – responses that might include puzzlement as to what is going on, relief that it doesn’t go on much anymore, a reaction to perceived elitism, obscurantism and misogyny.
One viewer looks at the photograph and sees a perfect replication of what Christ intended.
The other looks at it and sees a violation of what Christ surely intended.
And remember – both viewers are Catholic.
Here’s such a photograph. Commenters, if you please:
In a charitable, clear manner, explain what you see here. What gratifies you about the action in the photograph. What bothers you. Those who see it as beautiful, explain why and its deeper relation to your Catholic faith. Those who are bothered by it or mystified by it, explain why.
Image from this post at the New Liturgical Movement blog.
I find this photo thrilling. Why?
Because all are unified in adoring Jesus in the Eucharist who is the complete focus of all the people present. We are not distracted by seeing the face of the priest- the focus is totally on the Lord. Also, because Jesus is before us glorified yet veiled, and being clearly offered to the Father in His Sacrifice for us. It is His Sacrifice that is taking place and this style of saying Mass shows clearly that it is an offering.
Finally, it clearly shows that adoration and reverence are due to Our Lord, and this is conveyed by all that is present, from the postures to the vestments to the altar decorations.
I am not totally revolted by the picture, but I do find myself bothered by two aspects
(please don’t flame me!)
1) The fact that it is all men. I am not a believer in women’s ordination in the Catholic Church, but the fact that women may not play any role at all in this ritual bothers me, and I don’t understand it.
2) I do honestly have a hard time connecting this to the early Christian experience. I’m not an antiquarian, but can’t quite figure out how this fits with the apostolic experience. In a way, the Eastern CAtholic and Orthodox liturgies don’t bother me in this way because they seem well, more Eastern. I know that doesn’t make sense, but the medieval formality makes me feel like things are closing in instead of opening up.
I am not saying these are deal breakers. I am open to having this explained to me.
Reverence. An earthy appreciation and acknowledgement of the divine. As Thomas, above, said, Jesus is glorified – he is not being ‘folksified.’ The participants are trying to enter into the holy mysteries – not trying to dumb-down what is taking place.
As an anguished evangelical Protestant exploring conversion to Orthodoxy or Catholicism, I love this picture, for it suggests to me a transcendence which is routinely lacking in my present liturgical experience, while it also suggests an immanence communicated by the sacrament.
I have a bit of a schizophrenic reaction to these images when I see them. There is definitely beauty and reverence. There’s a good bit there to draw on one’s emotional side. That’s not necessarily a bad thing – it can be – but emotions aren’t inherently bad.
My other reaction is more varied. In this image, I see only the altar and the clergy (except for the altar servers). I don’t see the people. You rarely do when you see these images. I understand the role of the Priest, but this is the Mass of all the people, of whom he is a part.
I have no problem with the concept of ad orientem, all facing East, facing the Lord. It would be interesting to see if there could be a way of working that into an option for the Ordinary form of the Mass. Either way doesn’t bother me. I’m not distracted by the Priest looking toward the altar, facing “me” or if he is facing the altar the other way. We should all be looking at the altar either way.
Another thing is that, to me, it seems too complicated. There are too many little particulars that are focused on too heavily. I see how people could see this as more reverent, but still, I can’t help but think that simpler is better. When Jesus walked among us, He was pretty folksy – He was one of the folks, and His life was pretty simple. I honestly love a stripped down (not dumbed down), simple, quiet Mass with no hymns (maybe one). And I do like it sung in the simple chant style, in English. That’s extremely reverent to me.
I dip back into my Anthropology background also and think – Latin is just a language developed in a certain part of the world, at a certain time. There’s nothing inherently holy about it. It’s Latin, and for us, it’s an unfamiliar tongue. It can seem mysterious and can evoke emotions. I even like it. I’m just not sure that there’s a need to focus on it above other languages.
OK, that’s my 3 cents I guess. Peace and calm discussion to all in this blog house. :)
Ritual. It looks like something that is beyond any of the participants there, any of their personalities or cultures. It is very formal and serious, set apart from their everyday lives. I think the sense of ritual is important. I was at a Byzantine Divine Liturgy once, and I was struck how the Deacon was saying the prayers. They have some long prayers, and he was reading them very plainly, not like an actor would. At first I was thinking that he could speak his “lines” more expressively, but then I thought, he’s doing it the right way. He is not an actor, his “lines” are not about his performance, but about speaking the worship of the Church, which is already perfect without introducing his own personality.
I’m not against reverence, certainly, although I also think a versus populum mass can (and usually is) just as reverent.
I’m not against medievalism. I studied medieval history in college, have medieval art on the walls and listen to medieval music.
I worship in a parish where we have a blend of musical types. (Yesterday, some Bach, something Renaissance, English/German hymn tunes and something more recent for communion. And yes, chant comes in fairly frequently.)
I AM put off by all males in the sanctuary. I sometimes wonder why a ten year old boy has more of a ‘right place’ there than me – after thirty years of church ministry and a theology degree. Not that I act as a server. But I am a communion minister and lector.
I’ve gone to Extraordinary form masses twice in the last 40 years. My reaction was “Well, that was a fun trip back to being eight!” I have my old missal. My parents were conscientious about keeping me on the right page back then and helping me to learn the responses as I got older. So, I certainly didn’t grow up ignorant of the mass before 1965-70.
But, I feel alienated by being more passive at worship than one is in the Novus Ordo. No matter how beautiful the music. But I can get beautiful music ‘from the church’s treasury’ where I worship now.
If the Novus Ordo disappeared, I would know that the mass is still being celebrated. But I would have a qualitatively different experience of worship that I think would not be positive.
At bottom, I don’t see that there should be all this arguing anyway. I don’t do “suburban happy clappy” masses unless I have to. I don’t do Byzantine Rite. But I wouldn’t tell anyone that they couldn’t – or that the form of worship I experience is qualitatively better.
I think that the presence of Christ transcends those petty arguments about style. And if the style of the Extraordinary Form appeals to some, fine.
Just don’t assert it as the only option. (Just as I would quail at “Eagle’s Wings” and “Hosea” being my only musical choices.)
:shrug:
I’ve never had any particular issue with being distracted by the face of the priest. My focus is always on the Lord in the elevated Eucharist.
Whether the priest joins the congregation in worshiping the Lamb who he holds, or acts ‘in persona Christi’ in offering the Lamb to us, the same Lamb is glorified.
–Jason
I see a period piece…………..a tableau frozen in time…….of the Tridentine period.
Liturgy has undeniably changed over the centuries………..any century could be re-created in form, but not in reality.
Granted all its problems, I still prefer late 20th Century, early 21st Century liturgy. I prefer to think that God had something in mind placing me in this period of time and not in some other.
I agree with Thomas Tucker: the focus in the picture is on Jesus. Everyone worshiping in that church is looking toward the Lord, not at the priest. It’s almost as if we look along or through the priest.
Terry, this is why it doesn’t matter that the people shown in the picture are all men. They aren’t the big deal here–Jesus is. They are His servants, and they are also serving us, His people; they are not there to look special or talented or powerful.
Also, Terry, I thought your mention of “medieval formality” is really enlightening. We Americans have negative associations with the medieval past because of our English-influenced culture. After the English Reformation, English writers and historians had an interest in making their people despise their Catholic past. Eamon Duffy’s book The Stripping of the Altars shows some of how this was done; I highly recommend it. Within a generation, English people viewed their own grandparents as strangers. We don’t have to keep making that mistake. After all, the people of the Middle Ages were far closer to the apostolic age than we were! Gregorian chant may well be based on the very oldest Christian chant, growing from the chant of the synagogues.
All I’m saying is that we should not cut ourselves off from the past. As my daughter says, the Catholics of the past are our brothers and sisters in Christ!
I see a man offering a sacrifice. The man has a cross on his back.
“Christ has died, Christ has risen, Christ HAS come again!!!
So, I realize that aesthetics are in many ways a matter of taste, but I really have to think that one thing Vatican II seriously improved was priestly vestments.
I can’t see if the priest is wearing a maniple, but I suspect he is. I don’t think anyone has ever figured out what that is good for.
The shield on the back of the dalmatic (I think it’s a dalmatic) looks like the headgear out of “Space Balls.” I’m expecting the deacon (I think he’s a deacon) to turn around and find out it’s Mel Brooks winking at me.
The priest kneeling on the right (I think he’s a priest) looks like he’s wearing a carpet with a hole cut out of it.
There’s much to critique in the average celebration of the ordinary form, but I would think most would agree that there has been a dramatic improvement in priestly vestments in the last 40 years.
My reaction is unfortunately negative.
Looking at the picture, I find myself unable to breathe – and it’s not the incense which I have always preferred. Words that come to mind are “stuffy,” “elitist,” “closed,” “far-removed,” “confining,” “inaccessible,” “holier-than-thou,” “extreme,” “antiquated,” “inacessible” [there it is again – the predominant adjective that supercedes the others].
I have been to a more than a few of these liturgies at the invitation of friends who love and yearn for this rite, and in every case, I left with a sense of “thank goodness that is no longer the universal rite of the Latin Church.” Especially when the readings (1st, 2nd & Gospel) were in Latin and the Eucharistic prayers inaudible and mumbled, competing with a not-so-good schola attempting polyphony off key during an interminble Sanctus. The whole thing was rather gnostic – only a certain few possessed the language or sensibility to appreciate the beauty of the rite.
No wonder, folks would pray a Rosary during the liturgy; we were so far removed from something so transcendent that God was no longer “Emmanuel,” but “Allah” in a sense that God is totally transcendent and not at all Incarnate. I began to understand why we didn’t know Scripture – and why we thought the priest alone had all the answers, and why we would leave the Church to find Christ in separated communities that use Scritpure alone apart from the midieval trappings of a worldly Church more concerned about rubrics than about people’s salvation and sanctification. [None of that is true, I know – but this is the perception of friends who are not Catholic and would have even more reason to stay from the Church if the Tridentine rite were the universal rite].
Don’t get me wrong – I am grateful that Pope Benedict will be known among other things as “the Liturgical Pope.” Regaining a sense of reverence in current liturgies is long overdue – but the super-concretated piety of all contained in the photo is too much for this writer who is was formed in the 70s and 80s.
We must remember that the liturgy is not an end of itself, but a means to and End who is Jesus Christ – God’s Incarnate Son who presents Himself in Word and Sacrament all the Masses around the world.
Amy, I think once again you have put your finger on something important. I am very sympathetic towards liturgical reforms; I can’t stand folkiness and would like to see chant restored to its proper place. However, my gut reaction to pictures such as this is an uncomfortable feeling, for reasons very similar to those expressed by Terry above. Don’t flame me either :-) , I’m just giving my honest reaction.
I love the picture. Coming from a priest’s perspective not only is it more in line with Catholic theology and spirituality, it affords the priest the opportunity to actually pray , instead of the temptation to engage or entertain. The body language is congruent with the prayer as addressed to the Father. Looking at the parishioners while addressing God to me is confusing at best. Finally the photograph above on a gut level expresses humility before the awesomeness of God, He is the focus of our worship and unquestionably worthy of it, we humbly receive from him.
Even the NO, if Pope Benedict gets his way, will look more like the picture you posted than what Catholics are used to now. The whole point is to worship God, and this includes the celebrant. The other point, about the all-male group, is based on Catholic theology of the priest as an “alter Christus.” And, yes, given the way the Pope celebrated Mass in the Sistine Chapel yesterday, the Mass will certainly look “antique,” or “old-fashioned,” or “alien” to some, but it will have the advantage of restoring proper worship to God. By the way, if you are in doubt, do the reading from the old Missal and see how much of the Scriptures was contained. And THEN criticize Catholics for not knowing Scripture.
As for the eternal question about women in the sanctuary, etc., the TLM or the NO, as celebrated by Pope Benedict, makes it clear that we ALL are in the posture of worship – we all face toward God. I really think women have to realize that it’s not about “equal rights for women” or political statements, etc., but about revelation and something that has been given to us by God.
I have never been to a Tridentine Mass, but the absolute awe this inspires in the worship of the Lord makes me want to attend one.
My biggest problem with the Novus Ordo is the lack of any such reverence. Bells are not rung, altar servers, lectioners and eucharistic ministers don’t dress appropriately, people leaving after communion, etc.
For all those worried by the lack of a female presence, I don’t believe the Mother of God was breaking down the door to get in on the Last Supper, yet she is the Mediatrix of all Graces.
What Fr John said. I recently attended my first Tridentine liturgy and the sheer beauty of it almost had me weeping. It’s not about the parishioners, it about worshiping Christ. Love the photo, the colors, the reverence and I can almost smell the incense from here.
Extraordinary form’s still not something that I’m personally familiar with; a few times’ attendance doesn’t make something familiar. But this doesn’t look “strange” to me. It looks like a normal Mass, albeit of a sort of Mass I don’t usually attend.
I think I would have answered the same way as a kid. I’m of the generation that never got to see these things, but still had some sort of exposure to them through book illustrations and the like.
*shrug* It wouldn’t occur to me to be upset by the lack of women in the pic, anymore than I’d be upset not to see men in the women’s restroom. It’s not that I’m not feminist. It’s just that, when it comes to priests and acolytes (or single sex restrooms), feminism is beside the point.
The only thing that gives me the woogies is women wearing crazy huge lace veils when their outfit cries out for a cute little hat. (Mind you, I’m all for lace veils with outfits that demand crazy huge lace veils.) Mostly, this gives me the woogies only because I never planned on turning into my mother and caring what anybody was wearing.
Everything appears to have a purpose. There is an obvious orientation to the infinite which draws me out of my ordinariness to something beyond. Something mysterious I can’t understand. I’ve been to three extraordinary masses and it was only the last time I had a sense of the priest ascending the mountain in the person of Christ to dialogue/intercede before the Father. That’s what I see.
Yet, I am not drawn to this as in “that’s it! that’s the answer!” Only struck by the obvious purposefulness of the image. Orderly, organized, with movement that has a clear ending into something other than the people at the alter. There is Someone else there they are directing themselves to.
Hmmmm . . . That’s It!
JennE (occasional lurker, busy mom and I love your blog Amy!)
One interesting ( maybe) note: I didn’t assume that this was a Tridentine Mass. This could also be a very reverently celebrated Novus Ordo Mass. As we all know, or should know, Vatican II did not mandate having the priest face the people.
The gift of Catholic art and ritual, leading to union with the Holy Mystery.
I like it. It LOOKS like what it is – it looks like we are offering Jesus to the Father and asking Him (the Father) to look upon His son that we might be saved. The priest, in facing the altar, removes himself from focus and eliminates a distraction: the only thing we can look at, really, is Jesus in the Eucharist. (When someone is facing us, we tend to look at their face instead of what they’re holding.) Even a young child could glean from this picture the belief in the Real Presence.
My two cents.
I am visually handicapped, and have been all my life.
I just cannot really appreciate “visual” things.
For example, Mrs. Zhou recently went with her sisters
to a performance of Cirque de Soleil. I did not go.
Why? Because I cannot see the things to appreciate them.
(Rather, I loitered in some bookstores. Nice, 2-dimensional
books that I can hold close or read with a magnifier are
more my speed.)
So, I really cannot get into the visual aspects of the
discussion between various forms of worship.
However, and this is a big however, I am VERY attuned
to the aural and aromatic aspects of worship.
If this photo was accompanied by good Gregorian chant,
or other “traditional” polyphony, I would be thrilled.
And incense.
I am sorely grieved by modern “lectors” who cannot
properly phrase their reading, or by clergy who “ad lib”
the liturgy, or by musicians who feel the need to tinkle
on their piano through the Eucharistic Prayer.
These aural affronts annoy me.
I usually go to Mass with my eyes closed.
Not because I’m asleep, but because my visual handicap
is a headache (often, literally) if I try too hard to see.
But I listen, intensely, and boy oh boy,
do different Masses sound different.
-OZ
Several reactions.
1. Recalling the many early mornings with one priest, a couple of us servers, and a handful of worshippers undertaking a daily duty. We did a good thing, no better or worse than those who participate in the celebration of Mass today.
2. The realization that the typical parish Mass in those days, including Sundays, was NOTHING LIKE THIS PICTURE!! It was a low Mass done in a great hurry — one priest tried to break 20 minutes if possible — or a sung Mass with one priest, all in black as a memorial to someone (Month’s Mind, Anniversary). Sermon? Sure, 5 minutes about how much money the parish needed.
3. Finally, false nostalgia. All these nice young men who think that the key to ministry is playing dress-up and praying in a language that they don’t understand themselves.
You’re right, Thomas, but quite rare is the Novus Ordo Mass where the priest turns his back on his people to mumble inaudibly in a foreign language an incantation that is on the surface cultish and quite inaccessible. That is not the case for the Tridentine Mass.
Christ is the focus, not the assembly.
The priest is not one minister among many, but an ordained, consecrated individual. While celebrating Mass he is “in persona Christi”, not “hail fellow well met” with the congregation.
This is the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, not a feel-good communal meal.
All the congregation believe in the Real Presence.
The mood of reverence and deep contemplation as the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Christ becomes present on the Altar is not going to be shattered in ten seconds by the “proclamation of the mystery of faith”.
In ten or so minutes Holy Communion will be received reverently, in a kneeling posture, on the tongue, with no illicit “extraordinary” ministers in sight. (No offence is intended to those who sincerely and devoutly fulfil this role, but the intention always was that this lay ministry should be extraordinary, in time of special need, not an everyday occurrence, and certainly not a way of “enfranchising” pushy parishioners.)
In twenty or so minutes I shall hear those words which never fail to send a thrill down my spine: “In principio erat Verbum et Verbum erat apud Deum et Deus erat Verbum. Hoc erat in principio apud Deum. Omnia per ipsum facta sunt et sine ipso factum est nihil quod factum est. In ipso vita erat et vita erat lux hominum. Et lux in tenebris lucet et tenebrae eam non conprehenderunt …”
I love this picture! It evokes transcendence, reverence, grace, beauty. Even the vestments lead one to prayer. And I would say that it really looks like a sacrament — it looks like an embodied sacrifice. My husband and I have been going to the TLM a lot over the past year and it has really changed our spirituality — we are more contemplative now, more aware of God’s presence at mass. We find the N.O. very distracting — admittedly this is contingent upon your parish — our’s is noisy, irreverent, and only uses shmarmy music from the seventies (and we are not boomers).
A few more notes, if I am permitted:
1) I agree that Latin is a language, period, no holier than the rest. I can understand it, after six years in college and high school, and I can understand Spanish. I can’t understand Polish or Hungarian. I’ve been to masses in all of these languages and just the linguistic aspect didn’t make it feel more or less holy. What I do love is that the action is key. Even with the words in another language one can’t hope to understand, the action draws one into prayer.
2) Mass in my parish as a kid was not like this at all. The church was ‘temporary’ and later became the parish hall when the real (1970’s I’m afraid) church was built. No marble. I think more along the lines of plywood. Also, we lived in a very warm climate. In the summer, if mass went as long as 20 minutes (no homilies, lest we all pass out!) I would be surprised. I never saw a high mass until we moved to the big city. And I think my folks trying to keep three antsy kids still in the pews ended that experiment. (If one of my parents had a hankering for it, especially the music, they tag teamed and we didn’t go.)
3) Leaving early – how about coming late!?! I didn’t even know that there was a Gloria until I was ten. (My parents were devout, just not prompt.) I was told that we had to be there by the Gospel. ’nuff said. We didn’t high tail it out after communion, but enough did. My dad always figured that the early leavers would clear the lot before we got out there, and besides, we came late…. (It all evened out.)
4) I could care less about ‘looking at the priest’ at the altar. When he elevates the host, I’ve always looked at the host, not the priest’s face. And I’ll bet I’m in the majority. I detest an ego-centric, personality driven mode of presiding, but to tell the truth, I find those priests an (albeit irritating) minority.
5) The Extraordinary Form as it is usually celebrated today is an elite form of the liturgy. At least in my town, accompanied by paid choirs. And punctilious. I don’t remember this sort of celebration in the way back when. It was far from common then. (I doubt that our parish, with the plywood sanctuary appointments, had vestments for all the folks in that picture.)
I have to be honest: nothing.
And it disturbs me on a personal level. I find myself attending mass far more in a distracted, almost perfunctory way recently, than one filled with any awe or wonder about what happens in that place.
But as for whether the priest is facing me or not, which vestments he’s wearing or not, who is serving as an altar server or not… shrug.
It just doesn’t really move me.
So I guess I share Amy’s curiosity a bit. If someone could cut through all the ideological b.s. that gets thrown at this from all sorts and explain this to me at the core of what it means, on that truly deep level, for my life and my destiny in Christ, I’d appreciate it.
I think this is a beautiful picture. I agree with some of the posts here that say this photo shows people giving more reverence to the Eucharist than they normally see in the “Novus Ordo” – which isn’t novus to me because it’s the only one I remember.
I do remember, however, more reverence that I see today. Not simply at my parish, but at most churches I’ve attended in the past 20 to 30 years.
Even though I’d like more reverence in the Mass and I’d like more solemnity and greater sense of ritual, I am not sure I’d like to totally go back to what this photo shows.
As for the lack of women here. I noticed that as well. It’s not a political thing, as some people claim. It’s not a feminist thing as some people claim. I am a woman and, as such, I noticed that there is no one like me there.
I don’t think that a woman should be in that scene just because she thinks it’s her right. I agree totally with the person who said, “Women should realize it’s not about ‘equal rights for women’ or political statements.” It’s about Jesus Christ. But I wonder why that necessarily precludes women from being altar servers.
I do think a woman should be there if she desires to serve the Lord through one of the lay liturgical ministries. She shouldn’t be barred from doing this.
As for Mary not breaking down the door to get in the Last Supper. I don’t think she did that either. I think she was already there.
And, I wonder who cooked the Last Supper?
Maybe not Mary, but I don’t think those guys did either.
The visual composition is more vertically oriented, drawing the eye upwards, which I think is appropriate. The posture of kneeling to receive Communion and looking upwards also seems more appropriate to me when I attend this kind of Mass.
I am not an extreme traditionalist who thinks the Novus Ordo is invalid or less worthy a rite. I can only speak of my own personal reaction.
I came of age during the years right after the council. I remember everything changing, year by year. And as a teen, I loved the folksiness, simplicity and nearness of it. And the fact that we could write our own prayers of the faithful, etc. Maybe that’s what we needed at that time.
But all these years, I have yearned for the majesty, the mystery, the solemnity, the reverence of the older form. I believe, I worship every Sunday, but with the exception of a few Easter vigils, I am rarely moved emotionally at a Novus Ordo Mass. Many weeks, I don’t feel like smiling, shaking hands, and celebrating, I’m just there begging the grace to make it through another week.
So with all that being the case, I much more prefer the Latin rite now. The effort it takes to read both the Latin and the translation along with the flow of the liturgy makes distraction an impossibility for me. A veil keeps distractions out of my peripheral vision, I find. And I think lace, brocade, gold, incense, chant and sacred polyphony are more fitting a gift to offer God than glued-up felt banners, polyester, earthern vessels and sneakers. If this is all we had to give God, it would be one fine, but in my suburban parish, where the parking lot is full of $50-60,000 SUVs, shouldn’t we be offering God the best?
I am grateful for this gift of the Extraordinary Form. I don’t feel so odd any more for yearning for these things. I have learned or remembered things about my relationship with God by entering into old ritual as an adult.
If you read the two liturgies side by side, I don’t think you can say that these are the same rite in two languages. They each stress different things. I think we as a church are richer for having both of them, and I don’t think my preference should be everyone’s preference. I don’t think attendees of one form are better or worse than attendees of the other. I’m very happy to have a choice though.
Someone made a comment about younger priests with false nostalgia. There was an older priest who said the Latin Mass for us for the first time and was nearly in tears because he had abandoned its use when obedience required it as a young priest, but he had missed it greatly for these many years. I am glad that I got to share his joy that day when he was first able to preside over a Latin Mass again.
There would be a tactical difficulty to exclusive use of the older form. As a catechist, I don’t think I could ever adequately prepare children in an hour a week to understand the older form of the Mass very well. I’m lucky if I can get them to memorize three basic prayers in their own language.
I see a culture past, one recalled and living in imagination and memory, beautiful and mysterious, but not better, more reverent, or more revealing of Christ than the present. Let us have some freedom in our worship but remember the times we live in. Good times, not much better and much worse than the past, but different.
It is other-worldly. This is good because it tells everyone that this is something very special..a point clearly lost of many people who attend Mass without really understanding what is going on.
It is not so good because it might seem and/or actually be separate from real life, if the celebrant priest stays in lofty litugy mode and doesn’t do what the best of the folksy priests do, which is connect the Scripture to our real lives, (the nitty gritty of our real lives,) in a way that makes even the kids listen on occasion.
Initially I was put off by seeing the priest’s back, but I do like thought of looking past him and not being distracted by him as we all look toward Christ. Right now I find myself looking at the crucifix most of the time.
For what it matters, I have never been to a Mass as pictured here.
I see a very reverential act. I see a celebration centered on Jesus the Christ, offered to God in the perfect sacrifice.
As to what some other have said. I have been around long enough to remember that this was not the norm before VII. 20 minute Low Masses were the norm, one reason I believe the bishops at Vatican II saw a reason to initiate a reform of the Liturgy.
But Amy’s question was not dreg up all of the reasons badly celebrated Low Masses are bad. He question was, I believe to comment on the picture.
In it I see every person their engaged in the worship of God and centered on the Real Presence of Christ.
The vestment of the participants are appropriate to the dignity of the occasion, something that can not be said of the horrible sacks that pass for vestments at many parishes.
The use of Latin is not preferable because it is in any way more holy than English or Spanish, but because it prevents ad libbing by sloppy celebrants, and because it’s use allows Catholics who speak different languages from each requiring their own churches or Masses. It is preferable because the Liturgy of the Mass is composed in Latin, and the words have a specific meaning. Multis means “many” no “all”. The use of the word multis has a specific theological meaning which is changed by substituting the English word “all” for it in the translation. There are other less publicized cases which also exist in the English translation.
A Latin Mass does not have to be incomprehensible to anyone. The language is not difficult and the ignorance of this language, which is still used extensively in medicine, law and science is the result of a program of deliberate exclusion of its teaching from high school and university programs, more than anything else. In many ways one cannot have a serious conversation in Christian theology without using at least some Latin words.
Appreciation and love only follow knowledge–hence the importance of catechesis. The Mass, while it is the Sacrafice, is also the highest form of catechesis. The style of Mass that offers the Sacrafice and teaches the people the truth in the most profound and efficacious way is the best one. The Mass is (should be) the greatest evangelization tool. The state of ignorance of most modern Catholics about theology, history, tradition, liturgy, philosophy, and the Holy Scriptures in Priests and laity is what disturbs me.
My reaction was “reverence, magestic reverence.” What’s pictured is a Solemn High Mass, which one saw only on major feast days, not a typical parish Sunday celebration. Isn’t there a place for extra ceremony while worshipping God?
In pre-Vatican II days, I normally attended a High Mass on Sunday. Even daily Masses were usually High, both in my parish and at the University of Illinois Newman Center. People thought that a requiem High Mass was more of a gift to the deceased than a Low one. I’d been using a Missal since I learned to read and had no difficulty following along word-for-word. We were taught the dialogue Mass and the congregation learned to chant along by rote at the University daily Masses. Now that’s participation.
One regular Sunday Mass at my current parish is the NO equivalent of a High Mass, with older male servers, a deacon, and lots of incense–very reverent and serious in all respects.
I’ve been to a 1962 mass only once, and I had an ecstatic experience of the Real Presence.
I’ve been to a Tridentine Mass (very very different from a 1962 mass) and I hated it. It made me realize why Novus Ordo was so necessary.
But I think we could have paused in 1962 for just a moment and savoured what was going on. Tridentine was made accessible and beautiful for just a moment before the crazy stuff began.
I have a newfound appreciation for Novus Ordo done reverently and well. Novus Ordo that it isn’t minimalist or in any way influenced by Pope-hating Sisters. Novus Ordo that doesn’t appeal to hippies. Novus Ordo that employs the full arsenal of liturgical beauty: incense, chant, and ad orientem.
Consequently, I value the 1962 form much more than I ever would have– but it is still foreign to me; I can’t imagine doing that every single weekend. I would simply appreciate it if Novus Ordo was done correctly and artfully in all parishes. I think the vast majority of priests turned Novus Ordo into something Paul VI would have found abhorrent. I don’t think Pope Paul ever intended for things to get as out of orbit as they did.
We need to rescue Novus Ordo from mishandlers, not demolish it out of spite. My hope would be that a typical Novus Ordo mass could include more traditional and timeless elements that were relegated to the dustheap in the 1970s. I’ve seen it done. It isn’t hard. It requires only a little more effort on the part of priests and cantors.
I also wish women would stop trotting out tired protests. There will never be a shortage of women serving the Church; men on the other hand need encouragement and respect. The Apostle Paul knew what he was saying. If anything has been proven in the past 40 years it’s that we need strong male role models, not more attritions for women. Women run religious education, they lector, they sing, they pay the bills. Laypeople have plenty of things to do at church. Standing behind the altar should not be one of them.
If you don’t like being told “no” then you are the one who needs to reform.
Oh yeah– sorry about the tangent.
So my reaction to the photograph is that this is something foreign but not altogether undesired.
If the 1962 and the tradionalist Novus Ordo hold the center of the spectrum and the Tridentine and the contemporary progressive/liberal hold the right and left extremes, I could call this right-center.
I’d still prefer and advocate a predominance of left-center (aka the traditionalist Novus Ordo done well), but I could find myself easily moved to heartache if I were at the mass pictured.
I just don’t see it becoming standard any time soon. But its popularity may correct the effects of the progressive/liberal avant-garde and move the standard American practice closer to left-center. And then I’d be quite content.
My immediate gut reaction?
Lovely, reverent, focused, but… the Lord is out of reach – there are too many people standing in the way between me and Him.
Jesus shared Himself with all mankind forever in the simplicity of a meal. During His public life He often shared a meal in all kinds of settings. Augustine said it well when he pointed out to his listeners, “You become what you eat.” Too many of us even all these years after Vatican II are confused about the role of the presider and the words of institution. At Mass we no longer have an Alter Christus celebrating for us all to witness. All the assembled witnesses offer the Mass together. Read the words. The first person singular is not used.
Being human, we tend to resist the wonder, beauty and power of this simple universal sacrifice. We indulge in nostalgia,for a rite which flowed from a partial understanding of the Eucharistic sacrifice, first offered in the Synagogs and then in the home of the Believers in The Way ( our earliest name).
It is personally difficult for me to watch the shoddy tactics used by clergy to preserve absolute hierarchical control. Jesus did and said so much to avoid titles and worldly honor. We have a very long way to go to earn respect as His true followers. We can begin by getting rid of all the purple and gold. Have simple masses for believers who know what and why there is a ritual and presided over by one of the Believers. It will be coming soon to a church near you.
I can’t tell from the picture. I always remember, Amy, what you said a couple of years ago along these lines…something like, “In the final analysis, what matters is the prayerfulness of the mass”, and the picture says nothing about the prayerfulness of the celebration. I understand that externals matter–and often matter a great deal–but, for me, at least, they’re not determinative. I’ve been to Tridentine masses were downright ethereal and others that left me cold by their nearly arrogant piety. My parish church is an architectural gem with extraordinarily good music, but the pastor says mass as if he’s doing color commentary for the Yankees. It’s painful. I prefer to attend a small, old, musty-smelling parish about 20 miles from my house because the pastor, a Vietnamese man, is one of the kindest, most humble priests I’ve ever met. It’s easy to enter prayerfully into the mystery of the Eucharist when the alter christus has entered prayerfully into communion with the Father.
I think that many of us who attended mass pre-VII project our memories of those days onto the photo, as well. Sandra obviously has fond memories of it (lucky!), while I remember fear and anxiety…almost dread…as if I had no right to be there at all. That’s not something I’m anxious to revisit. I spend a lot of time with folks in their 70’s and 80’s who spent a lot of years attending pre-VII masses. I have never met anyone who misses it. To a person, they all prefer the Novus Ordo, generally because they, too, remember the old feelings of anxiety, fear, and exclusion. Younger people, of course, don’t have those memories, good or bad, to project. I envy them that. I hope that they can understand why, for some of us at least, that picture speaks more of pomposity than reverence.
In the end, I’m glad that Benedict sees the wisdom of making this a both/and proposition, not an either/or. The prayerfulness of the celebration is the sine qua non. All the rest is details. De gustibus non est disputandum.
I saw the picture as strangely beautiful, but cold. It seemed staged, and overly done (cope-type hoods on deacons’ dalmatics??? How odd!).
I was ordained the year of the change (’66), so I’ve never celebrated mass completely in Latin. For the previous quarter-century, however, I did attend Latin mass, often daily..and solemn masses, and pontifical masses (my parish was a cathedral). As a server I found them full of tension and stress, fearing I or someone else would make a mistake.
I also found a good deal of humor, as when the priest who was serving as subdeacon shook with laughter when the priest serving as deacon turned to face him and the congregation to sing an off-key “Ite misa est,” or when the other server couldn’t find the sanctus bell and said in English, “Ting a ling a ling”; or panic, as when the thurible got bumped and the burning coals spilled out on the floor– and bravery, too, as I picked up the burning coals and replaced them so fast that neither I nor the floor got burned.
I grew up with the Latin mass, but I’ve no desire to go back to it, even with all that fun. I love to celebrate Mass, but I would much rather celebrate the New Order in English or Spanish or French than Latin. (We don’t have any Latin speakers in the area.) I find the new rite (facing liturgical east or west–neither bothers me–though I prefer west) much more reverent, intelligble, full of meaning, awe and respect. I like the new music and the old chant as well, and find them both largely appropriate (though I believe Byzantine chant fits English better than Latin chant does.)
I’ve concebrated the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, and found it beautiful, if tiring (the chief celebrant had me sing much of it). But when not concelebrating, but attending Eastern Divine Liturgies, Byzantine, Armenian, Maronite, I find them as moving as the Western–and I’ve attended at different times when the priest faced liturgical east and west. I think the direction is not important.
As for incense, I loved it in olden days and I love it now. But I refrain from using it currently out of respect for several parishioners with lung problems who panic at the sight of smoke, unless I remember to warn them ahead of time.
As retirement looms, I can see myself eventually unable to help out in parishes, and having to celebrate alone. Given a choice, I’ll use English or Spanish. But –if the only book available is a 1962 Latin missal, I’d rather use that than not celebrate at all.
I would, I fear, still get tense and stressed if I had to partake in a solemn Latin Mass as pictured and would probably attend rather than concelebrate.
I see a priest worshipping God, and I feel like I’m right there at the altar with him.
This is partly due to the skill of the photographer, obviously, but I think it is also due to the “ad orientem” posture of the clergy.
Years ago I used to regularly serve at the Novus Ordo Missae; in those days I used to kneel behind the clergy in the apse. It was a very prayerful experience, being oriented with the celebrant. Now that I’m a pew-sitter, I’d like to experience that again from time to time.
The versus populum orientation in our modern auditorium-style church makes for an unfortunate image in my mind. I am reminded not so much of a sacrifice as of a professor in a lecture hall standing behind a low, squat podium delivering not a prayer, but a lecture. And as is typical in such settings, I am not listening.
A lot of good comments here. I’m fifty-eight, attended daily Mass in my youth, and during long periods of adulthood. I still go to Mass most Sundays. I have very mixed emotions, more negative than positive in viewing the picture. Mass was mostly not like the Mass pictured, and mine was a very conservative parish. The positives include not having the priest facing the congregation. It is difficult to be Jay Leno with you back to the congregation. That being said, we have in our parish a young priest who manages a very reverent Mass, so it can be done. Alas, our pastor isn’t in the same class. Another positive implied is music *and* silence. I’m a musician and I get sick of the constant piano. I also perceive belief and reverence, something sorely lacking in the Jesus-is-my-Buddy climate.
But this looks like a period piece, an attempt to recapture what we *think* we remember, rather than what it was really like. Some people used missals; many prayed rosaries, and some dozed. Music could be beautiful, or excruciating, just like now. Latin is a beautiful language, one the most beautiful to sing. But using Latin now will require a change of attitude and education. I could speak the Latin responses quite well – my understanding, not so much.
Good question and interesting replies.
Beautiful, transcendent, orderly, traditional.
Not to flame, but a woman would fit in this picture as a man would in a photo of Miss America contestants.
My father is 84, and before he became so far gone in dementia, he often talked of how much he missed the old Mass, and how horrible he found the music of the new Mass, that it just couldn’t compare. I just wanted to interject this to counter the comment about not knowing anyone in their 70s or 80s who missed it. I guess we were lucky–we all knew the people’s responses and what they meant in Latin, and we had our little Missals with both texts, even as children.
All in all, I’m very pleased with the photograph, but whoever asked where the laity were made a good point. Without the laity, all the high mass to-ing and fro-ing is ultimately rather silly – and I have seen liturgies that are like that. So, the picture, as lovely as it is, is missing an essential part of the picture. (That does not mean that the laity must be in the sanctuary either- that is certainly NOT my point.)
While the picture pleases me a great deal, many of the advocates of ad orientem do not. If traddies want to get people to love ad orientem, they should try to convince many of their friends to get a personality transplant.
My reaction is dual. It brings back both good and bad memories. I was 16 when the changeover began and so I have a pretty good memory of pre- and post-. My memories of the pre- are quite clear. I remember that when Mass was well and prayerfully done, especially when the congregation was able to voice the responses, it was a very good experience. One felt connected to all the centuries of Christian time. However, when it was badly done (and believe me it was badly done frequently), it was an experience of confusion and frustration. What made a pre-Vatican II Mass bad? 1. Priests who mumbled the words, to the extent that they were completely unintelligible not only to the congregation, but I’m sure to the priest himself, 2 priests who rushed through the Mass so fast that one could be done in 10 minutes and finally, 3. priests who were in such a hurry to complete the Mass that they didn’t even offer the Eucharist to anyone in attendance. The change to Mass in English was a welcome relief from most of these abuses. Priests could no longer ignore the people and they actually had to pay attention to the words they were saying. And, while getting people to sing has been nearly impossible, there has been no difficulty in getting people to respond to the prayers. I think that in itself says a lot about the Mass and how involved people are.
I notice that the current enthusiasm for the 1962 Mass tends to focus on the full-blown solemn high Mass. Those tended to be well done, on the whole. Low Masses were the most subject to abuse. So I find it interesting that it is not the Low Mass that is being revived.
I certainly have no objection to the 1962 missal being used widely, especially for a High Mass . However, it would take a great deal for me to abandon well done. prayerful, correct novus ordo Masses, in any language. It is not the rubrics of the current missal that caused the current rejection of it, it is the often senseless “playing around” with it that have been the culprit. It might be better to focus energies on making all novus ordo Masses as prayerful and reverent as possible, and that can be done in either orientation, as the Pope showed us in his Mass of yesterday in the Sistine Chapel, in a novus ordo Mass prayed in Italian, not Latin
Reading through the comments, for some folks the clergy in the photo are them, people standing in the way between me and Him; however, other folks see the clergy as representing us, people worshiping our Lord, together.
It seems to me that the response comes down to how one views holy orders.
As a former evangelical pastor for 20+ years and a Catholic educator for 7, I’m with Irenaeus: in the Catholic Church I found the transcendence I went looking for “in all the wrong places” for most of my Methodist pastorate: Jungian psychology, new age balderdash, etc. It was only in my Confirmation into Mother Church that I found — or got found — by the Source and Summit of transcendence, our Eucharistic Lord.
I am the Pope’s man, and so I am with him come Latin or no Latin; facing the Altar or the people. I am thankful for the Magisterium for giving ontological, epistemological, and anthropological certainty I never enjoyed elsewhere. Or, more simply, in Arnold Lunn’s phrasing, “I got tired of being my own pope.”
I see reverence. Awe. And yes, Majesty…worshipping the true King. As a woman who remembers only VII NO masses, I have absolutely no problem at all with all males there. I have to say that I have a deep understanding of the Holy Virgin and I, like her, am a woman and I understand: It’s a different role, not a lesser one.
We are very American and we have an ingrained protestant-y knee-jerk reaction against heirarchy. Somehow, we believe, it just can’t be quite right. No one is “better” than me. But that’s not what a real heirarchy is and our misunderstanding of this is key to our understanding.
There is a choreographed beauty that is missing in NO masses. I find the vestments more important; they look like they matter more. (To paraphrase a comment above: there’s a difference in the meaning of polyester velour and brocade, gold and velvet.) There’s a timelessness that can make me believe I’m in a different century…or many centuries. In many countries, and we’re really united. Universal.
This looks very much like my usual Sunday mass. Which is a high sung NO, with plenty of Latin.
It looks like this is the most important thing in the world. And it is.
I should have said that I did sometimes encounter the infamous 20-minute Low Mass, but that was mostly on holy days of obligation when workers needed a quick liturgy on their lunch hour.
The dialogue Mass must have been less common than I thought but I loved it and still remember the chants.
As for old people not missing the old rite, I’ve noticed that when Latin hymns turn up during Masses at our local Little Sisters of the Poor nursing home, none of the residents sing them, just older visitors. They don’t seem to know even “Tantum Ergo”. I wonder why?
It’s very pretty, much prettier than my parish church (built 1962). There is a Tridentine Mass every Sunday, 11 minutes from my house, but I haven’t been to it. I don’t have a great interest in it, especially since some of the people I know who go to the Tridentine, give the impression that they’re more Catholic than I am.
The (NO) Masses at my parish are well done, reverential. The altar boys are well-trained, including the thurifers (including, ahem, my son). No dances, potato chip bowls or lemonade pitchers for the Body and Blood, goofy music or goofy sermons. It ain’t broke here.
Home at last! It has been such a long time! Born in 1960
The picture evokes in me the awe and beauty I remember when attending the celebration of the sacred mysteries in the way I did when I was a youth. Thank you and God bless you, Pope Benedict XVI!
For those here commenting who have attended the ‘Old’ Mass back ‘in the day’ (when it was the ONLY Roman rite Mass allowed and available): I highly doubt ANY of you were heading for the nearest Protestant church of any variety….OR any other (OR no) faith for ANY of the reasons stated above (Mass then was stuffy, strict, devoid of women servers, etc.) THEN….so why the criticism NOW?
If allowed, I would pose a question: WHAT was REALLY wrong with the Mass as celebrated for 500 to 1500 years prior to the mid-1960’s?
My answer: NOTHING was REALLY wrong with the Mass then AND nothing is REALLY wrong with celebrating the Mass NOW just as it was for all those centuries prior to the 1960’s.
The picture: It seems to put the priest on the same side of the altar as the people assembled to worship so I don’t see it as separating the people.
On the blog “The Deacon’s Bench” (don’t know how to put a link in) I saw this quote recently:
“As a footnote: I can’t remember the last time I saw anyone, anywhere, use a paten during communion. ”
FYI:
I’d just like to say that when I served as lector for the NO Mass in our parish yesterday the young altar server used a paten. It is not uncommon for people to receive on the tongue although many more do receive in the hand. Except for rare occasions, the only time we hear Latin in our parish is at Stations of the Cross during Lent when we sing Tantum Ergo. We only have incense at Easter, Christmas, and special Masses. BUT, we do have bells! When I travel I often wonder where the bells are. Our altar servers ring them unless it is inappropriate for the season.
I’ve been to a Tridentine Mass and liked it and it is now available nearby in our diocese — a change. I think on a regular basis would be a NO with some Latin — like the Mass on EWTN.
Without having yet read the other comments so I beg pardon if I am repeating anything—the photo doesn’t put the question fairly except for someone sitting in a balcony beside the photographer. Present a photo taken from the angle of a person in the pews and consider how much of the actual altar he could see.
“My Lord , My God, My All!!!!!”
As one reader above put it– I felt like weeping…
The TLM touches my soul like it has never been touched.. It hits you with such an overwhelmingly intense feeling of complete humility.
I never experienced that feeling in any NO Mass in my life- and have been to countlesss all over the US that were beautifully celebrated..
Even now, if I attend a NO- I still do not feel the the interior transformation within my soul as intensely as at the TLM.
This photo of a solemn high Mass looks so normal and beautiful to me now.
When I started attending the Latin Mass five years ago I was shocked (“The women wear veils!!!!!!!!”) Then slowly, over time, I relaxed into the beauty, the reverence, the ritual.
I began to experience an inner quiet during the Latin Mass. I could relax becuse I knew what to expect. In the local N.O. Mass I was constantly having to educate my son about why this or that behavior was not appropriate in church (“No, the extraordinary minister shouldn’t show us her belly button jewel while handing out commmunion.”)
The Latin Mass isn’t about me (“How dare the priest turn his back on me!”) it is about adoring our Lord Jesus Christ and receiving Him even though we are unworthy.
“At the name of Jesus every knee shall bow.”
I like it, but I agree with DelRayVa that some of the garments seem over-elaborate. How exactly is the main priest’s garment standing in the air like that?
My main reaction, however, is definitely a positive one.
I find it beautiful. I find it reverent.
Two points beyond that – not to argue, just to ask questions:
1) I find it difficult, personally, to fully grasp the powerful desire some feel to be up in the sanctuary for the mass. That somehow one’s participation is not full unless in immediate proximity of the altar – doing something. If anything, my chief sentiment is that I’m simply not worthy of such an honor. To say that is not to say others are likewise not worthy of such – I’m simply speaking from my own perspective. But I know there are people out there who feel this way – I have run into them long before reading the combox here today.
Is it that modernity places such emphasis on the exterior? Or that it these roles partake of power – and therefore that failure to participate excludes from this power?
2) Should the liturgy be guided by a retrieval of the earliest traditions of the Church – what Pius XII called archeologism? Do we follow Jungmann (or at least his earlier thought) and view the centuries of patristic, medieval, baroque developments in the Roman – and other – rites as gradual deformations and accretions which must be stripped away until we are back in the Upper Room? If we do this, does this diminish the lived experience of Roman Rite which changed little from the timeof Gregory the Great until the 1960’s? Or, likewise, the even more intricate Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom? Is such a retrieval even possible?
At least some here seem to share such a desire. I ask these questions because I’m curious whether such a position can retain the essence of Catholicism. But then perhaps that begs the question of whether we can agree any longer on what the essence of Catholicism really is.
My feeling by seeing the picture is pratically neutral. Of course I see the reference there to the Lord, but it is probably no difference than the reference given by people attending the NO. imho the level of reference to the Lord has nothing to do with Dressing up the priest and the servers with nice expensive grabs that Jesus never wore once in His life.
I certainly will not deny people who likes the sight and sounds of the TLM if they choose so, and I welcome and glad for Pope Benedict initiative to allow the TLM to be celebrated more freely, because I think we need more liturgical diversity not less.
But I only smile when some people make claim that the TLM will make things in the church that have been gone wrong since Vatican II go right again… Do they really think that if TLM becomes so common as the NO is now (5 masses each sundays etc.), the beatuy, reference or whatever that drawn them on each one of those masses would be exactly the same as shown in the picture above ?
It would have been most interesting and instructive if each commentor would have been required to give his/her DOB, and brief history of engagement with the Church (dates of baptism or reception, first communion, confirmation, ordination if applicable). Then we could have seen the ‘demographics’ of the range of opinions.
WHEN I SIT TO EAT WITH FAMILY WE USUALLY FACE EACH OTHER BECAUSE WE ARE SHARING A MEAL TOGETHER. AT THE LAST SUPPER THEY RECLINED AROUND A TABLE AND FACED EACH OTHER. I ATTENDED LATIN MASS UP UNTILL I WAS ABOUT 9 OR 10 YEARS OLD AND I LOVED GOING TO MASS BUT COULD NOT UNDERSTAND WHY THE PRIEST HAD HIS BACK TO US. THE LATIN, IT’S A DEAD LANGUAGE, IT’S WAY PAST TIME TO BURY IT.
One thing that is clear in these responses is that there should be some education with regard to the older Use.
For starters, Mr. Delray iin his comments on vestmets has obviously not really taken in hand any modern vestment and compared them to Pre-Vat II vestments. In gthe first place it should be clarified that there were in pre-Vat II times two basic cuts, the Latin Style and the Gothic Revaval style. The latter were a little fuller and not as stiff. which style were used was largely a matter of taste.
But both kinds had two things in common. they were made of either silk, silk velvet (as the vestments in the picture appear to be) or cloth of gold or silver. The modern vestmets have areusually mostly polyester. Not only does this sugggest a difference in quality. It also suggests a difference in attitude. There is more of an emphAsis on being ordinary in the new vestments.
Also, Mr. Delray wonders if the celebrant is wearing a maniple.
Of course he is!!! He is also wearing a cassock (which is not a vestment), an amice, an alb, a cinture, a stole wornn under the chasuble and crossed over his breast and a chasuble.
Of what use is the maniple? One might as well ask of what use is the chasuble. Both are about as ancient and neither was an invention for the liturgy. They evolved from ordinary dress and have been pssed down though the centuries. Mr. Delrays questioning of these things is a perfect example of what the Holy Father refers to as the Hermeneutic of disruption as opposed to the Hermaneutic of discontinuity. Intil about 1970, the vestmetns used woluld hae been essentially familiar to Charlemagne.
The Liturgical reformers who FOLLOWED Vatican II, with no authority from the Council abolisahed the maniple, uncrossed the stole and allowed it to be worn over the chasuble. the amice was made optional as was the cincture. Modern cassock albs etc. whose tradition dates back only to the 1970’s liturgical haberdashers became the rule. No, Mr. Deray. That was not an improvement!
The “strange crest” that is being worn by the sub-deacon is merely a humeral veil. They still exist. The picture here is unclear which may account for Mr. Delrays reaction to it. The subdeacon is wearing it to hold the paten.
One could comment on many other things in the above letters but I would just remark that the manner of offering the TLM in the old days was not always perfect. There were bad celebrants and the time had come for more lay participation e.g. the Dialogue Masses which were gaining in popularity.
But the Rite itself had so much goiong for it that it that these problems were not as bad as they might sound. Compare a bad celebrant in the Older Use with a bad celebrant in the Novus Ordo and the Older se still comes out on top. Perhapas if one lays out the two Uses side by side and reads all the prayers in each se including the silent ones the reason for this might be more apparent.
It looks familiar as I was and altar “boy” in the 50’s. Now I am in formation to become a permanent deacon and know much more about Liturgy and our Faith then I did back then.
If we are part of a truly Universal Church, I believe that we have to have room for all. I have participated in Masses in Hong Kong (Cantonese), UK, Canada (French and Lebanese)and,Veitnamese)and the form currently in use truly is Universal. However, a Tridentine Mass said in Latin is as meaningful to some of our brothers and sisters as Mass said in any other particular vernacular or style.
Jesus’ sacrifice on the Cross is re-presented at every valid Mass and that must be the focus.
I see the highest form of worship we can give to God: The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass! There is no doubt that the Traditional Mass is beautiful to the eyes but I personally have no problem with the Novus Ordo offered in the vernacular. I am a priest that appreciates the options that have been given to him by the Church to either offer Mass in the Ordinary form or the Extraordinary Form. Both are beautiful, both can be meaningful, both give glory and honor to God.
I normally offer both forms each day. What a grace to be Catholic, I hope that either of these forms will encourage all men and women from every land and culture to become apart of God’s church.
If you will allow me a second post, I would like to share the following description from “The Fortune of War”, one of Patrick O’Brian’s series of Aubrey/Maturin novels. Stephen Maturin, a naval surgeon, is a prisoner-of-war on parole in Boston during the American-British War of 1812. It is early morning:
“He hurried into his clothes, but even so the priest was on the altar by the time they reached the obscure chapel in a side-alley, and crept into the immensely evocative smell of old incense. There followed an interval on a completely different plane of being: with the familiar ancient words around him, always the same, in whatever country he had ever been (though now uttered in a broad Munster Latin), he lived free of time or geography, and he might have walked out, a boy, into the streets of Barcelona, blazing white in the sun, or into those of Dublin under the soft rain. He prayed …”
This passage works powerfully on me, as I remember Masses from my own childhood, and bitterly regret what was lost – with no real gain – in that “spirit of the Council” gadarene rush to be “modern” and “relevant”.
My response is that of bait and switch. I was swayed by these kind of pictures and I’ve attended several Tridentine Masses: at least one was a special Mass in honor of St. Michael. What Anthony #64 says describes what I witnessed.
What does move me? Several years ago, I was in a parish where the priest led the Confiteor ad orientem. And last week, after the altar girl incensed the altar, she kneeled facing the altar and holding the censor during the Eucharistic Prayer. In both examples, I felt like I was part of a common people journeying toward the Lord together. I like a little ad orientem could be a good thing.
Orientation. Worship. Awe. Majesty. Sacrifice. Silence. The ‘Holy of Holies.’ Peace.
I see the Tridentine Mass. It makes me happy. Why?
1. It is the Mass, the celebration of the Eucharist.
2. This rite (“Tridentine”), which I had the pleasure of reading the Missal for online, is very beautiful, inspiring, and pious; I don’t know if it is more so than the NO, but I do know that it will aid the Church in her work toward unity.
3. It reminds me of what the Pope made possible essentially for Christian unity (this is also means he did it for the SSPX, so that they may return to the Church)
4. It also reminds me that the Tridentine Mass has always been allowed to be celebrated ever since Pope John Paul II “liberated” it (to the best of my knowlege); the MP just made it so Priests don’t need permission from Bishops to celebrate it
5. It also reminds me that some Bishops are blocking the MP. This in itself dose not make me happy, but it dose remind me that God brings a greater good out of evil, so the whole matter will be resolved, and no matter what, the Church will keep on living until the Second Coming of Jesus
6. The colors of the Liturgy inspire me to go to the Mass.
7. The scene reminds me of a picture I saw in a devotional book, of a priest offering the Sacred Host to the Holy Trinity (the Son on the Cross, the Father above, and the Holy Spirit proceeding from his breast). This picture, in turn, it reminds me the words Jesus spoke: “When I am lifted, I will draw all men to myself”.
Present a photo taken from the pews today, and ask how much of the altar you can see. Especially if you’re short and a woman, and big tall guys are sitting in front of you; or if you’re a child.
There’s actually a lot better chance of seeing one of the old main altars up against the wall, because they were placed at the visual focal point of the whole church, have the light of the windows focused on them, and are up on steps besides.
Similarly, how much of the English can you understand when priests indulge in making up their own gobbledygook, or when the Prayers of the Faithful get into some involved phrasing with lots of buzzwords?
Can you actually catch the scriptural references, or the references to Jewish prayers, when the current translation at times deliberately obscures them? Heck, have you ever even _heard_ the Gloria as it’s supposed to be — heck, did you know that we announce “peace on earth, goodwill to men” every week? In the current Latin, we do; in Spanish, we do; in English, we don’t.
I’d say that having an illusion of understanding is a lot worse than knowing you need to look at the subtitles in the Missal. And I say all this as someone who loves the Novus Ordo, but was horrified when I compared the Latin and Spanish versions of the current Mass to our English “translation”. (Thank God for the bishops’ authority to bind and loose, because nothing else could make that translation sufficient for use.)
I see the Roman Rite as celebrated for 15 centuries prior to the late 1960s. For those who have a problem with this way of celebrating mass, it isn’t the mass that needs to change…
Read books like Alcuin Reed’s “Organic Development of the Liturgy” or Msgr. Klaus Gamber’s “Reform of the Roman Liturgy” (both of which carry glowing introductions by Ratzinger). It is clear that the Roman liturgy (until 1969) has remained fundamentally unchanged since the time of Pope St. Gregory the Great, and perhaps even earlier.
Other books to read that were either written or endorsed by Ratzinger: “Spirit of the Liturgy” and “Feast of Faith” by Ratzinger; “Turning Towards the Lord” by U.M. Lang; “Looking Again at the Liturgy with Cardinal Ratzinger” by Alcuin Reed. Cardinal Ratzinger also gave a strong recommendation for Michael Davies’ books on the liturgy. Read those books to get the pope’s mind on the liturgy. I think you will be shocked to see strong support for the classical Roman Rite, as well as the reform of the new liturgy back to a more organic continuity with the old rite. Be prepared to see from this pope more “stuffiness,” elitism,” “clericalism,” and other such pejoratives used by nay-sayers on this thread.
My initial impression is one of unity of intention and purpose. of course, the chances of most of us seeing a solemn high Mass are about the same as sighting a giraffe on Main Street.
The comments are interesting because they represent the wide range of opinions and expectations that people of good will bring to this question.
The other aspect that I see in the picture is “preparation.” While there were (and probably still are somewhere) rather sloppy low Masses in the traditional rite, the rubrics presuppose a level of deliberate preparation and attention that is often sadly missing in the Novus Ordo, where the servers appear to have had about 15 minutes of instruction. (Before anyone jumps on me, I don’t hold children responsible for the omissions of their elders.)
What do I see? That perhaps the authoritarianism of the liturgical establishment, which has prevailed for so many years, is facing its end and that maybe the ideological posturing, that has supplanted genuine theological conversation in regards to the nature of Catholic worship, might be ending as well.
The photo is not a useful to me because there is so much else that is more important than the mere visual and I resent our current cultural emphasis on the visual over those other things. The fact that we can try to reduce experiences to photos and movies is a telling trait of our culture – and not a good one. Stories and art (not just visual but musical) are so much richer.
So, to start from the impoverished perspective of an image, that image has some beauty and awkwardness to it.
The beautiful things? Well, the first thing I noticed was the gorgeous masonry behind all this action – very noble visually and I assume acoustically. The altar furnishings are beautiful, but I stronger prefer the recovered emphasis in the 20th century on large, square-ish altars of sacrifice, rather than (1) shelf altars, or (2) mere tables. The vestments appear to be well designed and made for their style, whcih is not always the case.
The awkward things? The sheer volume of folks in the sanctuary during this moment. (If people complain about communion ministers flooding the sanctuary after this moment, I don’t understand welcoming all these folks during it, either.) The apparent exclusion of women from the sanctuary (note, I did not say from Orders) – I’ve read the arguments over many years, but they haven’t yet persuaded me.
Ad orientem? Not awkward for me, but I would propose celebrants use both orientations to remove the ideological baggage they’ve gotten saddled with that doesn’t belong to them. Ideology is an attribute of modernity, regardless of the orientation.
Then there are a ton of things that we can project onto this image that aren’t necessarily there. Which is the point to detach from the image and move onto more general issues. I find overall that the conciliar reforms considered by themselves to have been very worth it. The process was understandable in its context but something that should serve as a warning about excessive optimism about the capacity for ritual change in a short period of time. And the varied implementation owes much to many different factors, often *not* ideological progressive liturgics, but most frequently pragmatism followed by old preconciliar habits in new clothes.
Since I like some here am a liturgical child of the interim Missal (I was baptized in the preconciliar rite, but most of my formation was during the interim Missal period), I don’t have first hand testimony about before-and-after. But I do recall that in the two parishes my family frequented (one of which was a Liturgical Movement-oriented parish run by Benedictines), relatively few people mourned the end of the preconciliar ritual as such and by and large appeared to welcome the changes. Much more striking in memory for my family and their peers (as I recall listening to it) was the shift in the Holy Week services in the 1950s. Which most people hardly discuss these days….
What do we see in these posts?
Good Catholics who want diverse worship experiences.
Unfortunately, there is virtually no diversity in most dioceses.
It’s all modern, every parish, every service.
If we had a vote, I’d vote for both. An English service here, a Latin service around the block.
I believe the Church has already blessed, in Her Wisdom, both.
I suppose, that already having lived this expression in liturgy, I don’t really see this replica image as so foreign or alien…or even in the existential fear that others have expressed. It was just part of our life experience before it was suddenly taken away. So I find it to be utterly simple in forming the truly rightful place of man to His God. And its attention to details? Reminders of the necessity to dot the i’s and cross the t’s of our own actions in readiness for eternal reward. It’s therefore Truth that is expressed. But then, when the the spiritual order is expressed through humbly dignified actions, there must naturally come to our consciences some jarring reminders of that order of ourselves to God…and, in such a now habitually casual way that we see ourselves today or the expectations of ourselves that we’ve lowered to the world’s standards, there can be an uncomfortable reaction before such an expressed reality of God’s True Presence.
Someone mentioned above:
I’m not an antiquarian, but can’t quite figure out how this fits with the apostolic experience.
In truth, this image expresses the apostolic experience (its ideals and sacred restrictions) much more so than what we now have.
And Jesus being “folksy”?? Never have I thought of Him expressed as such in scripture. There was always a removed dignity/control/power. He always had to seek His comfort with the Father to refresh Himself away from the crowds. He expressed impatience to the lingering time He had to endure with “the folks”. And those folks certainly didn’t see Him as the guy next door when they expected so much from Him on a quite different level from themselves….instant miracles – “how could you him die?” His control over Satan; mad men. Why they even wanted to stone Him or toss Him over a cliff due to His pronouncements of authority.
But I think this thought of Amy’s:
And remember – both viewers are Catholic.
expresses the justice in the mind of our Pope….that for too long has so much been hidden from the respectful view and approach of those who wish to offer much greater respect and reverence than the continual confusion that goes on in our “banquet”, chit chat, gatherings where almost nothing jars us to that different realm.
There is also much reason for altar BOYS in those places of introduction/initiation to what could be a real possibility for their future lives.
Again, it just conforms much more to a reality of Truth about God’s own will; what He wishes us to learn about Him. One can simply assume the presence of all the angels and saints in adoration in such an expression of the mass compared to the other. But perhaps it’s only in the eye of the beholder!
Ah, the Holy Week revisions! I loved them. I was in a high school choir at the time and we sang those services. Previously, most people took Good Friday and Easter seriously, but Holy Saturday was ignored except for noontime bringing an end to the Lenten fast. In the tiny Louisiana town of my childhood, the only evidence of Holy Saturday was the mark of the New Fire on the church lawn. Nobody attended the service.
The Holy Week of Pius XII isn’t the same as our present liturgy, which added Bible readings and stripped out symbolism. Line up three Missals from the three eras and see which one you prefer. I vote on the Pius XII version.
The picture – sheer beauty and glory, and ‘solemnitee’ in the Middle English sense which conveys joy and celebration rather than pomp and stuffiness.
I’m one of those converts (like several others here) who loves the Extraordinary Form for its beauty and transcendence – and I’ve been to enough low Masses in that form to discount the externals, lovely though they are in a Solemn High Mass. I’m Jewish by birth, and see in the ancient rite the continuation of both the synagogue and the Temple rituals (the latter, of course, dead for nearly two thousand years).
I do wonder, though, whether God’s providence determined that we should lose the old rite and wander in what has so often been the wilderness for forty-plus years, just so that it could be seen with new eyes, appreciated for what it really is, and discard the negative elements which are (I’m sure, quite rightly) remembered by older folks with disgust: carelessness, ugliness, lack of Communion offered to the people, and all the other problems mentioned above.
I am drawn to what the picture evokes — majesty, solemnity, reverence — things so much lacking in today’s worship. However, it does seem such a period piece, one that is out of place in today’s environment.
This sort of thing will work only when all the surroundings — church architecture, music, interior design — fit in with the same mindset. For example, my parish church has a classic 1970’s boxy congregational design, with a barely raised altar, minimal interior religious accoutrements, and a flat, low ceiling. Such a Mass, with ornate chasubles, elaborate rituals, and emphasis on the vertical, would produce a jarring effect and would be completely out of place..
I occasionally attend an NO Mass at a nearby Benedictine monastery, and it works because the chapel architecture is very liturgical, there are a number of full-length icons, the music, while modern, is not trendy. Bless the Benedictines for their appreciation of good liturgy and for delivering the goods!
Amy,
I would be very interested in your analysis of the above responses, it might be helpful to see in aggregate the places from which these arguments flow. It seems to me that most of the arguments come from 3 different places. Those who reacted positively to the above picture seem to respond to the reverence and awe that is expressed there as well as being connected with timelessness of the faith and her worship. To be fair I am of this camp. I would place those who reacted negatively to the picture into roughly 2 different camps, one of which are those who have negative memories of a 20 minute mass (poor liturgy)which is very sad. The other group seems to generally be more of a egalitarian attitude, and bristle at the idea of the division of roles, the word “medieval” was used in a negative connotation in some of these posts. It seems to me that these folks were heavily influenced by the “revolution” culture of the late 60’s and early 70’s where a distrust of the establishment and institution was the general trend. It seems to me that this group approaches the liturgy with the from the perspective of Rights and the sharing of power, they seem to feel that owed something, contrasted with a more receptive attitude amongst the first group. Please understand that I am not purposely trying to offend here but rather understand and process what I see in these reactions.
I grew up in the 50’s and like the some of the posts above, I do not remember Masses like the one pictured. I mean no disrespect here, but when I look at this picture, I see a performance rather than worship.
I have no issue with the picture honestly. It isn’t so much a problem that this can also be done in the ordinary rite so much as this picture is quite exceptional in the context of the extraordinary rite. A priest and two altar boys is the norm. Pictures like these, especially those with a picture of the congregation included, have always been better arguments for ad orientem to me. These kind of picture are also good arguments for high masses, something that is woefully lacking in parishes.
Immediate impressions from a 1962 HS grad who grew up with the old Mass:
1) This is staged for a photograph and does not represent what the typical parish High Mass was like – it looks like Madame Treasseau’s (sp?). As stated by the last commenter, there were almost never more than a priest and two non-clerical servers. The only time I saw a Mass like this was at the dedication of a new church for my parish when all the stops were pulled out for the special Pontifical Solemn High Mass said by the Bishop with several priests serving as deacons. [No concelebrated Masses then].
2) Thank God the priest is not wearing those big white gloves that I have never seen in real life. The priests at the new oratory in St Louis have taken to wearing those gloves. I’ve only seen them in photos of by-gone Popes, but never even in the one Solemn Pontifical High Mass I witnessed for the church dedication in 1958. A friend tells me that the religious order Burke has installed at the new Oratory is from Germany where it was the custom to dress so elaborately and process excessively.
I get the impression that people attending Mass at the new Oratory think that’s what Mass used to look like with all the people on the altar and the elaborate processing around. It was not the normal experience in the US – or in France where I attended Mass weekly in Paris in 1964 and had no problem understanding the universal Latin Mass and Catholic hymns. [One reason I picked up French so easily was my familiarity with Latin]
3) My high school year book shows us learning the dialogue Mass in about 1960 – and there are simplifications in my 1962 missal from my 1953 Missal and even bigger changes from the 1934 Missal which is huge. So incremental changes were already occuring before V II.
All of these Missals, by the way, encourage full participation by the people. For example: my 1953 Missal says that “all the faithful can taken an active part in this Sacrifice. Assisting at Mass, we should do four things:” (my summaries)
– Reconstruct the historic setting of the events – gleaned from the vestments and Mass of the Catechumens;
– Offer to God the mystery of our Redeemer’s life or the acts of virtue by the saint being commemorated – done in the Canon of the Mass;
– Ask God for graces via the merits and intercession of Our Lord and saints – in the Pater noster;
– As far as possible, add exterior participation such as reading prayers with the priest, sing congregational and Gregorian chant at High Mass, respond aloud at Low Mass, and best of all, receive Holy Communion with the priest.
4) The style of cassock looks very familiar from my younger days. I was away from the church when most priests changed to the fuller Gothic style. I never understood why the change was made, but it is inconsequential. Why are people bothered by the Gothic?
5) Facing the altar is not jarring. To me it is similar to being in attendance at the ceremony where the President lays a wreath at the tomb of the unknown on our behalf. He does not shun the people, he is acting in their stead. Sometimes it feels like I’m watching card tricks if the NO priest is theatrical.
6) One last thought: there is still the same thing happening at the altar whether the priest talks fast, in Latin or English, or even mumbles. It is a rite, a ritual, and not a prayer meeting. Its validity does not depend on the people in the pew.
I am genuinely sorry for the older commenters who had never seen a Solemn High Mass or a Missa Cantata in the 1950s. In my childhood I attended Mass in a largely working-class, predominantly Irish, parish in an industrial city in the North of England. Every Sunday, one of the scheduled Masses was a High Mass, with three priests on the altar and a top-class choir of men and boys (which had won several awards). I repeat, this was a very ordinary, rather poor, parish. (To my knowledge, similar Masses were held each Sunday at other city-centre parishes in the city. Of course, in smaller, one or two priest parishes in the suburbs, Low Masses only were the order of the day.)
And the High Masses I attended were really much “grander” then the rather austere photograph you show above.
I’m trying not to respond to some of the above comments and just speak to the original question. I was raised in the 70’s, in a pretty liberal parish in a pretty liberal diocese. I never experienced anything resembling dignity and solemnity in worship (with the exception of Holy Thursday, and its procession with the Blessed Sacrament and the occasional smattering of Latin – an event which makes Holy Thursday still my favorite day on the liturgical calendar) until I went to college.
When I see something like this, I am thrilled, and drawn – emotionally and intellectually – to the focus of worship, God. I see myself and the worshippers there drawn together in a wonderful and mystical throng, across the ages, across the latitudes and offering together, there in that priest’s hands, the best we humans have to God. I see the sublimination of my person and my personality – drowning in a sea of grace, if it were – and as part of the Church, engaged in that worship. I see also, in that act, the loving face of God looking back at us – the assembled congregation, all facing him, accepting our worship with the same enthusiasm my mother used to accept my feeble attempts at putting together bouquets for her from the dandelions and goldenrod in the field across the street.
I see the handiwork of the seamstresses and tailors who put their best efforts forward to adorn this act of worship. I hear the strains of a choir attempting – and sometimes accomplishing – transcendence. I see fidgeting altar boys, trying their best to behave – not because mom and dad are watching, but because everyone around them is focused on the seriousness of the activity. I see order and stability, which enables me to relax and lets God invade and consume me. I see my sins and the sins and flaws of the community – at work, but transformed by God who reaches through the pride, the jealousy, the sensuousness, the selfishness and crafts from it an act surpassing anything we would be able to do on our own. I see an act that is not our own – not a worship of the community, nor even a worship produced by our community, but a ritual, handed down by generations of generations, guided and directed by the Spirit, designed to show us how to worship: the Our Father writ large in attentiveness to seemingly minor details.
I see worship that does not depend on me, but nevertheless draws me in, transforms me, and elevates who I am to who God expects me to be.
Of course, in many parishes, if there was a high Mass, it was the last one of the morning. Before the reform of the Eucharistic fast in the 1950s, it was (I was told by family) usually attended by late sleepers (the punch line of a standard Catholic joke in those days) or by people who did not communicate every Sunday. The reform of the fast meant more people could eat breakfast and still communicate.
One of the interesting continuities in pre- and post-conciliar practice has been the emphasis on validity. Mind you, I’ve had to remember this when attending Mass that was subjectively underwhelming. But the same mentality that normalized the idea of the Low Mass recited by the celebrant on the exhaling and inhaling also begat the idea that “creativity” was OK so long as you had validity, notwithstanding the ritual books. (This is but one of the things I was referring to above about preconciliar things surviving in a new guise in the postconciliar context.)
Perhaps I can clarify something for Julia. The gloves to which she refers would not be worn in thi Mass in this picture as they were limited to Pontifical Masses celebrated by bishops etc. They were not always white. They were the same colour as the other vestments unless the Mass was a Requiem.
The gloves were not worn for the entire Mass which may explain why Julia didn’t notice them at the dedication of the Church in 1958 but if it was the full Rite of Consecration and not merely a blessing as most churches got then it would have concluded with Pontifical Mass and yes Julia! The gloves would have been worn. They were obligatory.
When Archbishop Burke celebrates Pontifical Mass ini the Extraordinary Use he wears the gloves because they rubrics prescribe them. If some bishops don’t wear them in the tridentine Rite nowdays it is because few bishops possess them anymore. Don’t blame the “order that the Burke brought in.” Until 1969 the gloves were conferred upon every bishop at his consecration. The traditional Use did not allow options. It’s in the Novus Ordo that one sees personal tastes prevailing.
Now, not to shock Julia too much but the next time she sees Archbishop Burke celebrate Pontifical Mass in the Extraordinary Use she should look at his feet. He will be wearing silk (or cloth of gold woven with silk) shoes and stockings, also the colour of the vestments. These used to be the perogative of the ancient Roman Emperors but when the Emperor Constatione liberated the Church he bestowed the right to wear these items on Pope St. Sylvester I. Their use spread to all prelates who had the right to celebrate Pontifical Mass from that time in the fourth century AD until 1969.
Then they were gone!
Another example of the hermeneutic of disruption.
I see a Mass in which the priest separated from the people, rather than facing the people as Christ likely did at the Last Supper. I know that ad orientem is supposed to show us that the priest is “just like” the faithful (sort of — and sort of not like the pepole, since he’s dressed in a very ornate way), but I can’t help get the sense that the assembled faithful are relatively unimportant in this version of the Eucharist. Whether traditionalists like the phrase or not, the priest does have his back to the people. Though the Eucharist is an adoration of God, there’s a reason that we are all called to assemble together to celebrate it. The people do matter. We are called into relationship with God in the Mass — though the old way would seem to suggest otherwise, since it is so distant from the humble holiness of the Last Supper. And I fear that if Benedict gets his way (and he will), we’ll see this becoming the norm, the preferred form, within the next five to ten years. How sad that so much of Vatican II is being unravelled before our eyes.
Steve
I just stumbled upon this page. Perhaps this blog is frequented by young people who are too young to remember the Church before all the changes following Vatican II.
I am middle-aged. I grew up in a parish where our conservative, auxiliary-bishop pastor did not make changes even after Vatican II (by the way he attended sessions of Vatican II). Because our pastor was bishop, we had pontifical high Masses on certain days. I then fell away from the Church for many years.
When I look at the picture, I see the Church of my youth. It is the picture with which I am most comfortable. I have never been able to adjust completely to the New Mass and the other changes. For me the picture is “normal.” The Mass I currently attend, on Sundays, strikes me as bizarre. There are guitars, conga drums, busy-bodies running around, joke-telling priests, etc.
I know it might sound weird, but some of us feel at home with thuribles; the smell of incense; lace chapel veils on the ladies; Gregorian Chant; leather missals; hard wood pews; rosaries dangling everywhere; a tabernacle straight ahead; a priest who acts like he has an important ritual to perform; and silence before Mass.
Dave O’Rourke:
Thanks for your answer. Yes, it was a full Pontifical Mass – I have a tape recording of it that I like to play for people because absolutely everything is sung. It includes the bishop announcing and giving a special Pontifical blessing. I also have a photo taken from the choir loft – I’ll look closer and see if there are white gloves.
Query: why do the Oratory priests do a full Pontifical High Mass every Sunday? Friends of mine say that the celebrant, even when it’s not the archbishop, wears white gloves.
I was in the choir that sang at Burke’s installation. It appeared that his vestments had either rhinestones or crystals sprinkled over them. I had never seen that before.
I see worship that looks more biblical and less sociological. For those who object to an elaborate liturgy, take a peek at the OT descriptions of priestly ceremonies, the tabernacle, the Temple. Those ceremonies — the prologue to the Holy Mass – were highly elaborate. The chosen people of that time used the best materials available to them. Here we see marble and silk rather than cement and polyester.
Yes, the celebrating priest looks different from the others in the sanctuary who also look different from those in the pews. Each of us is called to holiness in a unique way. Just because the eye is not an ear, it cannot say “I have no need of you”.
Chances are high that the Mass depicted didn’t use Marty Haugen music and lyrics, but possibly even the actual propers of the day. The propers are biblical texts. Haugen’s lyrics (and most of his contemporaries) are usually pop-psychology that too often conflict with the biblical expressions of the Faith once delivered.
There is less room for the celebrant’s personal expression in this Mass than in the Mass as usually celebrated in my experience. I know many people who go to particular Masses because of the priests who are celebrating them – a rather clear departure from the spirit expressed in this upcoming Sunday’s second reading and an ironic over-emphasis on the celebrant.
Mostly there is a heightened reverence. Spend some time reading the Psalms (out of the Bible so you get full text) and you’ll find many expressions of reverence. The Mass as commonly celebrated today (and, according to the testimony of many, as commonly celebrated in many instances before VII) lacks that reverence – that doesn’t make reverence irrelevant. That is no more an excuse for abandoning reverence than a single sin is an excuse to abandon the Faith. The things we are called to are difficult: otherwise why would everyone face a massive crucifix?
Just one minor point I feel should be clarified:
Steve says: “I see a Mass in which the priest separated from the people, rather than facing the people as Christ likely did at the Last Supper.”
This impression of the Last Supper and meal arrangements more generally in the 1st century gained some currency in academic circles in the early 20th century. But the evidence suggests otherwise.
In regard to the Last Supper, then-Cardinal Ratzinger in The Spirit of the Liturgy quotes the eminent liturgist Louis Bouyer: “The idea that a celebration facing the people must have been the primitive one, and especially that of the Last Supper, has no other foundation than a mistaken view of what a meal could be in antiquity, Christian or not. In no meal of the early Christian era did the president of the banqueting assembly ever face the other participants. They were all sitting, or reclining, on the convex side of a C-shaped table. . . . Nowhere in Christian antiquity could the idea have arisen of having to ‘face the people’ to preside at a meal. The communal character of a meal was emphasized by just the opposite disposition: the fact that all the participants were on the same side of the table.”
But all of this is just a small part of the question of the direction of liturgical prayer. And it should be noted that even most advocates for ad orientem in the new order of the mass usually confine to proposal to the canon of the mass, not the entire liturgy.
“I certainly have no objection to the 1962 missal being used widely, especially for a High Mass. However, it would take a great deal for me to abandon well done, prayerful, and correct Novus Ordo masses, in any language. It is not the rubrics of the current missal that caused the current rejection of it, it is the often senseless ‘playing around’ with it that have been the culprit. It might be better to focus energies on making all Novus Ordo masses as prayerful and reverent as possible, and that can be done in either orientation.”
“I do wonder, though, whether God’s providence determined that we should lose the old rite and wander in what has so often been the wilderness for forty-plus years, just so that it could be seen with new eyes, appreciated for what it really is.”
I want to second both of these comments enthusiastically.
“My high school year book shows us learning the dialogue Mass in about 1960 – and there are simplifications in my 1962 missal from my 1953 Missal and even bigger changes from the 1934 Missal which is huge. So incremental changes were already occuring before V II.”
So these were incremental changes. Isn’t it reasonable to conclude, based on the evidence, that the night-and-day change from the 1962 missal to the 1970 missal was unfairly thrust upon people? According to my parents, some places switched from dialogue mass to felt banners and acoustic guitar in less than a fortnight!
Amy suggests we not go back to one decade or another, but I would very much like to revisit how poorly the Novus Ordo was introduced. I grew up in the fallout, so I would appreciate connecting the dots…mistakes were made, and it doesn’t serve my generation for people in Amy’s generation to try and smooth things over before we’ve had a chance to take umbrage. (I’m 27 btw)
I am not mystified at all by the picture. And the only thing that “bothers” me is the possible implication that there is nothing good in the post-conciliar liturgical reforms. Why celebrate using the 1962 Missal rather than the 2002 Missal? One can use the latter with Latin, chant, fiddleback chasubles, ad orientem, scores of male altar servers holding candles, etc. So why the 1962 missal? So one can have a subdeacon in a humeral veil? So one can use have the last Gospel? Are these things worth losing the option of proclaiming the scriptures in the vernacular? Or the rich treasury of Prefaces in the current Missal? These things, plus a host of others, seem to me real gains.
So I guess what bothers me is the possible (and I stress possible) implication that the post-conciliar Church is a vast wasteland in which there is nothing good to be found.
When I first looked at the picture, it reminded me of one of the first masses I ever attended. I was 37, and my wife and I attended with our RCIA sponsors. It was fully in Latin (except the reading and homily) with a very accomplished schola. It was just as pictured: ad orientam, two deacons, numerous other servers, a wonderfully restored old century-old church. It was the most reverent, majestic and awe-full mass I’ve ever attended. And it was Novus Ordo…
I can hardly wait until I am able to be a part of the Extraordinary Form of the Holy Mass! Yes, I know that the Sacrifice is there in both forms but I long for the reverence and beauty and the prayers of the EF.
I am tired of the round church, the gathering of the assembly ideology and the banal songs about ourselves as we clapfor the entertainment. I desire a Christ centered liturgy. No more jokes or running dialog at Mass as though Father is an MC.
I pray the holy mass from the 1962 missal already. Now my diocese never allowed an indult and there is no EF yet….but one day I will be there.
I do receive Holy Communion on my tongue and love to receive It at a communion rail when I am able to when I travel.
Let us partake in the One Sacrifice of Our Lord in the most reverent, holy, and beautiful possible manner.
Speaking to the various changes thrust upon the faithful overnight with seemingly no rhyme nor reason, I have the memory of my brother’s wedding in 1967. It was insisted upon (why, I never understood) that all of the attendants who usually were individually spread out in the 4 or 5 front pews had to sit all together in the first pew because of the new spirit of community! And yet my Irish tenor uncle who had sung at most of the parents’ weddings was to sing once again the Our Father, but had to leave out “for thine is the kingdom, the power, etc.” in the ending because it wasn’t authentic, and so the hymn just sort of, well, ended flat. And out of such examples of attempts to understand what this new free “spirit” meant came so much that followed!
ah yes, the order reflected in this image!
I see Heaven…
I suppose one has to juxtapose the NO verses the Traditional Mass with what the Church teaches about the Mass as a sacrifice, (the NO sacrificial prayers pale in comparison to those of the Traditional Mass as regards to expressing the element of sacrifice), the priesthood, the Sacraments,Dogma and even the Bride of Christ Herself. Which Mass more fully expresses that which the Church teaches? Feelings have no place in the reality of all of this. It is reason. If one wants feelings and such, one can always go into “snake handling”.
I once had a priest, in his sermon, state ” when the discussion of the Novus Ordo verses the Traditional Mass is taking place, it is not the same thing as to say that I prefer peas and you prefer carrots and we are both correct; that it is only an issue of preference. One is intrinsically better and more pleasing to God than the other.” And by the way, this Traditional priest did not give five minute sermons.
As to comments that the servers at the Traditional Mass do not know what is going on in the Old Rite because of their lack of Latin knowlege; I can only tell you that my two sons, both Baptized in the Old Rite, can fully recite the Holy Rosary in Latin. They also each and every week say their prayers of Thanksgiving after the Mass at which they serve at our FSSP parish.
F.C.Bauerschmidt: “Why celebrate using the 1962 Missal rather than the 2002 Missal?”
Simple: Because the fixed and proper prayers – with rare exceptions – better reflect Catholic dogma.
In the 1962 missal, there is much more emphasis on the Four Last Things, and on the mass as sacrifice – as it should be. It is less anthropocentric. Less solipsistic. Less egalitarian. More coherent.
Why did these prayers – which had in nearly every case been present and unchanged forover a millenium – have to be changed?
I might as well ask: Why not take the 1962 missal and just translate all the variable prayers and readings into the vernacular? Or heck – translate all of it? And throw in the prayer of the faithful if you like? And add in the best prefaces of the N.O.? In other words, why not take 1962 instead of 1970 as your starting point if the concerns you have can be so easily addressed?
Instead, we ended up with a new – fabricated (but yes, valid and licit, and even with some redeeming value) – order of the mass and junked the one that had stayed essentially immutable for 1400+ years.
I don’t mean to turn this into yet another N.O.vs. Tridentine scrum. I do want some focus on the deepest reasons why many appreciate the old missal – beyond the nice vestments.
Everything in the picture leads to Christ as the summit- wonderful! Turning in prayer together is a beautiful thing, and I hope it starts to be understood as such. We are worshiping together, not each other.
No gals doesn’t bug me a bit. I pray my heart out from the pews.
‘And it should be noted that even most advocates for ad orientem in the new order of the mass usually confine to proposal to the canon of the mass, not the entire liturgy.’ I agree with this. My preference is the Ordinary form partly for this reason.
I also think F. C. Bauerschmidt’s comments are spot-on. Cleaning up the Ordinary form was a driving force behind Summorum Pontificum, after all. And I pray and work towards that goal as a musician. It bothers me when ONLY the Extraordinary form is called beautiful and I see good reason for most of the reforms of VII, AUTHENTICALLY implemented.
Thanks for opening up the conversation, Amy, very interesting.
I have detected a strain of comments that go along the lines of “I am old enough to remember that it was never like this.” Whether or not that is true is largely irrelevant to the whole premise of the celebration of the Mass in the Extraordinary Form. The fact is that the rubrics provide for such a celebration, and in many places where the Extraordinary Form is celebrated, one will find a similar scene take place as the priest raises the transubstantiated Body of Christ for the adoration of all those present (this is certainly the case every Sunday morning at 10:30 at St. Kevin’s, Harrington Street, here in Dublin, Ireland). God Himself created beauty in the world, and there is nothing wrong with allowing the liturgy to be beautiful. Many of us (myself included) are drawn closer to Him as a result of this beauty – not only the music and the incense and the vestments, but the very richness of the language of the prayers of the Extraordinary Form.
Fr. Rob Johansen has written an article regarding the reactions to the above picture here:
http://thrownback.blogspot.com/2008/01/necessary-conversation-about.html
Here is a snippet:
“But there has been a great effort to downplay and even eliminate the hierarchical nature of the liturgy in recent decades. There has been an attempt to “horizontalize” the liturgy: hence all the 70’s and 80’s talk of the liturgy being a “celebration of community”. The mindset created by such rhetoric can be seen in the complaints that in the EF, or the Novus Ordo celebrated ad orientem, the priest has his “back to the people”. Of course, the assumption inherent in that complaint is that priest “should” be facing us, that is paying attention to us. Nowadays, when some people see a celebration ad orientem, they are “put off”. I submit that this is because they have been subtly led to think that the liturgy is “about” us. A posture in in no way mandated by either the liturgical teaching of Vatican II or any post-conciliar document has been invested with an ideological meaning (itself nowhere taught by the Council), and has deformed the liturgical sensibilities of many of the faithful. Our expectations of the liturgy have been formed not by authentic Catholic theology and piety, but by the ideologically constructed categories of the prevailing culture.”
My reaction to the picture?
Beauty, harmony, order. A sense that we are not at Grandma’s house getting ready for the potluck.
I see Christ – and other Faithful Christians humbly and simply adoring him.
All things directed to God, that is what I see :)
My very first impression of the photo itself is that I see Christmas and feel the presence of Angels. . . .
I see Our Lord in the Eucharist.
Then I see a lot of people arguing about whether it is/is not good is/isn’t authoritative there aren’t women/child/blacks/jews. Etc ad nauseum
Let’s focus on CHRIST and the liturgy that most gives Him the true honor, glory and reverence due. I saw so many arguments against this rite, but not one that argued that it gave Our Lord less reverence, was “lower”. What really gives to Him what we must, in justice, render? Is that not the question that we must ask?
Why are only the people who seem to support this picture, the ones who ask these questions about the liturgy?
Wonderful picture! Reverence. A liturgy without annoying priestly individualism and personal style. One that is about Him, noone else. One where I can fall down and worship Him, without having to worry about looks from the people at the altar.
But something that catches my eye though is that there are *four* people in clerical vestments… Shouldn’t there be just three?
I am a Protestant so maybe I don’t even know what I am looking at, but what I see is timeless and beautiful. All attention, all eyes, are focused on the cross.
Tridentine or Novus Ordo, it doesn’t matter. The High Church Anglicans still do our liturgy far better than we do, and the Orthodox liturgies never deteriorated into kitsch ladden pomp and circumstance as we have in the Catholic Church. The choice left to us now is the grand floor show, stiff formality of the Tridentine liturgy or the do your own thing banalities and aburdities ranging from the plain ,boring Calvinist-like communion services to clown masses. Even Methodists and Baptists often have services with more dignity and decorum, not to mention more inspiring.
Until there is a new spirituality and the call for a new liturgical movement to investigate ways of reconciling our past with our current pastoral and psychological needs, with the flexibility to borrow from western and eastern liturgical traditions, Roman Catholics are not going to be satisfied with the state of the liturgy at any time.
The Council fathers mistakenly put an end to liturgical experimentation, rushed through the changes, never prepared those in the pews who pay and obey, and then permitted local bishops and Monsignor Bugnini back in the Vatican to interpret what the Council fathers had just decided. What’s more, many bishops have claimed they didn’t know what they were voting for during the council proceedings. The liturgy was “mismanaged” from day one.
Popes Paul VI through John Paul II were asleep at the switch while the church lost millions of members over the failed efforts at “inculturation” and “anthroprocentrism” in public worship. Now the church is faced with growing indifference and outright hostility from traditionalists and modernists alike. The Vatican paid a dear price for believing it could send decrees and anathemas to correct abuses, and reorder the piety of the faithful. What a dismal failure!!!
That is management from the middle ages and meaningless in today’s world where more Catholics watch Mass via the Utube than they do by going to church.
Perhaps good Pope Benedict can make things whole and new again. May he have many more years to correct the widespread abuses now rampant throughout the church.